HS2....who/what should we believe?....

[ahinton]

Is that another way of saying it's virtually impossible to run a railway without subsidies and at the same time keep ticket prices affordable? Because if it is, I agree with you. Or put another way, rail transport is not cost effective compared to other transport systems. However, that's not the same as saying we should do away with them. London (and other large cities) cannot operate without railways.

First of all, apologies for any confusion caused by the typo in which I wrote "that's now what I said" when of course I meant " that's not what I said (I've corrected this now).

I do not know if a rail network can be run profitably in everyone's interests but I've no evidence to suggest that it would be possible to do in its own right (i.e. without subsidies). Subsidies may not necessarily be a bad thing, though, because one could say the same for most concerts and operatic productions in that the ticket prices alone simply would not and could not fund them in their entirety unless they were so sky-high as to be unaffordable other than to the very rich, most of whom wouldn't attend them anyway.

[Serial_Apologist]

Demonstrate it. If you want to make a case for re-nationalisation

A nationally integrated publicly-owned transport system - such (more-or-less) as the one that existed in the UK prior to piecemeal privatisation of local bus services and then BR. If getting people to and from work at what were once true "rush hours", and most people neither worked from home, had computers, and couldn't afford their own private transport means was the evidence needed, this could overcome the expense of overpaid, duplicated many times over boards of private companies, all keeping each other in the dark as regards planning and pricing on grounds of "commercial confidentiality" and paying any profits made to shareholders rather than reinvesting in what we would all have an interest in existing and using. To the answer so often given, namely the one that reminds us of all the inefficiencies and staff rudenesses encountered on BR, etc, there is the counter-response that natiionalisation is not so much the problem as model of nationalisation.

[jean]

...it's your apparent view that the solution to this is re-nationalisation. To support that argument you've offered reports of franchise failures, and some verbiage from Bob Crowe. Now this report...

"...I don’t imagine a nationalised railways system would be perfect, just significantly better. But privatisation has shown that private ownership does not in any way get rid of these things, which have increased since the sell-off. Thus they are not diseases of nationalisation. In general, the problems of the railways are caused by 80 or so years during which they have been starved of investment, which has been diverted to gigantically subsidised nationalised roads and to air transport, provided with airports and air traffic control by initial state spending, and vastly subsidised by being exempted from fuel tax . The government subsidy which is given to the railways (much of it now diverted into the trousers of the train operating companies) allows them to continue to operate, but not to expand in response to demand (in fact they were forced to contract on the eve of a great expansion of population and transport need, by Richard Beeching’s ill-thought-out cuts) , not to electrify the network properly (a task which should have been completed decades ago, and was so completed in comparable European economies).

The railways are always apologising because they have been starved in this way. Their ancient diesel engines break down. Their signalling systems are antiquated and unreliable. Their financial structure, and decades of route contraction, compel them to cram as many passengers as possible in smasller and smaller trains. Meanwhile nationalised roads are constantly lavished with funds for expansion, widening and so-called improvement - despite the known fact that their capacity is severely limited, and even with all this spending cannot keep pace with the demand it creates, which tends to do no more than shift bottlenecks about). Railways, being a far more efficient means of transporting people and especially goods, would if expanded give far better returns on investment than roads, and be much better able to keep pace with demand.

The nationalised railways managed to preserve a level of competence in maintenance and management which seems to have eluded the new privatised or semi-privatised companies...

They also sustained a native industry of locomotive carriage and wagon building which is now almost entirely extinct. They also managed to maintain the track at night and on Sundays, without the levels of disruption now common..."

Bob Crowe? The Guardian? No, Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday.

[An_Inspector_Calls]

Summarising:

• The railways have required state subsidy for the last eighty years.
• The level of subsidy has always been inadequate.
• The railways are now decrepit and out-of-date.
• Meanwhile, the road and air transport systems thrive on state subsidies.
• The nationalised system maintained a competent maintenance and management system which the privatised companies haven't.

[for which see #150:

. . . whatever demonstration there is of a lost engineering competence (just as there might be for the CEGB) we are where we are now. You'd be attempting to go back to a situation where we once had engineering competence in depth, and now we have very little.

Sounds more like an argument for complete closure than nationalisation.

[Richard Barrett]

[*]Meanwhile, the road and air transport systems thrive on state subsidies.

"Thrive" in what sense? The road transport system is choked almost to breaking point and almost grinds to a halt at least twice a day, and both it and the air transport system are far worse polluters of air and space than the railway system is. But perhaps these are minor considerations for you.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

there was complete agreement between noted Thatcherite Portillo and noted Labourist Johnson on This Week against the views of Boris Buffoon's Pa who hated HS2 as a complete waste of tax payer's money and a cess pit of loss making business .... both Portillo and Johnson were adamant that the benefits of HS2 were not direct but very substantial .... such rail investment fostered growth and integration of society thus creating overall economic benefit of great value ... Buffoon's PA seemed constitutionally incapable of appreciating this argument as having any validity compared to counting the £s. imv Buffoon's Pa is wrong about the case on strict business lines, most firms that operate with his cost aversion go bust quicker than those firms with a strong sense of contribution and competence as Mrs T could have told him when she initiated the Channel Tunnel ... [or did she intend that as her monument?]

it is a disgrace that we can not run a decent rail system at both national and local levels and that our capacity to manufacture the rails, stock and equipment for same is so miserably diminished ... as to nationalisation, well we could let the French, Germans or Spanish National Rail s take it on ... they currently do so for energies and waters eh?

[ahinton]

there was complete agreement between noted Thatcherite Portillo and noted Labourist Johnson on This Week against the views of Boris Buffoon's Pa who hated HS2 as a complete waste of tax payer's money and a cess pit of loss making business .... both Portillo and Johnson were adamant that the benefits of HS2 were not direct but very substantial .... such rail investment fostered growth and integration of society thus creating overall economic benefit of great value ... Buffoon's PA seemed constitutionally incapable of appreciating this argument as having any validity compared to counting the £s. imv Buffoon's Pa is wrong about the case on strict business lines, most firms that operate with his cost aversion go bust quicker than those firms with a strong sense of contribution and competence as Mrs T could have told him when she initiated the Channel Tunnel ... [or did she intend that as her monument?]

it is a disgrace that we can not run a decent rail system at both national and local levels and that our capacity to manufacture the rails, stock and equipment for same is so miserably diminished ... as to nationalisation, well we could let the French, Germans or Spanish National Rail s take it on ... they currently do so for energies and waters eh?

Well, the French and the Spanish do it far more cheaply than it's done in Britain, that's for sure (I don't know about Germany); a letter I read in The Daily Telegraph a week ago yesterday questioned why it is that, as the French can build train lines at a cost of around £9m/mile and the Spanish at a cost of around £36m / mile, why does it cost the Brits £129m / mile? Now I cannot vouch for the veracity of the writer's figures, nor do I know the sources from which he got them, but not only is his question a valid one if the figures are anywhere near correct but is also occurs to me to woonder why Spanish rail consruction comes out at around four times that of the French.

As to the arguments about cost benefits of HS2, whilst I remain to be convienced that there are likely to be any, at least not in the foreseeable future (and the entire project including the section linking it to Scotland is likely to be some 30 years in completion), the mere advancing of such economic arguments in its favour seems to be a case of putting the cart before the horse if the construction cost really is almost 15 times as much as it would be in France.

[jean]

...we could let the French, Germans or Spanish National Rail s take it on ...

They already have taken on parts of it, and we have let them.

[french frank]

as the French can build train lines at a cost of around £9m/mile and the Spanish at a cost of around £36m / mile, why does it cost the Brits £129m / mile?

Calculators out: this article says that the 410km line from Paris to Lyons is expected to cost €12bn.

"After 2020 work is expected to begin on a second high speed line between Paris and Lyon, running for 410 km via Orléans and Clermont-Ferrand and costing up to €12bn, as well as a second Paris – Calais route via Amiens or Rouen that would cost up to €4·8bn."

[french frank]

Not sure of the date of these figures:

"It is estimated that the cost of completing the 651km Madrid-Barcelona line will be about Pesetas 1000 billion ($US 6.29 billion), while another project which has been approved by the government is the 150km Madrid-Valladolid high-speed line, costing an estimated Pesetas 250 billion."

[eighthobstruction]

Any chance the Chilcot Inquiry will be published before HS2 pulls in to a station platform....http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2...tes-blair-bush

[aeolium]

Another comment on how the HS2 project is spun:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/21/how-much-cost-scare-british-taxpayers-pay-hs2

It is depressing that at present none of the three main political parties is opposing this (as none opposed the war in Afghanistan). A cost-benefit ratio which barely requires a benefit on a hugely expensive project is absurd (and includes such chicanery as denying that anyone can do any work on a train). And this at the same time as the cost-benefit ratio required to justify any preventative scheme for flood protection is 1:8 i.e. £8 of benefit for £1 of investment. Just once it would be good if a government abandoned dogma and looked dispassionately at the merits of a proposal, compared with possible alternatives.

[Dave2002]

I understand that there is to be another vote on HS2 today. My view continues to be that this is not a sensible project to embark on at this time, and that funds could be better spent on other projects, both for rail travel and for other aspects of our society.

I do not understand how we can at the same time be told that we as a country are in dire financial straits, yet also that we should invest in a project which would appear to me not to provide many of the beneficial features suggested by its proponents, while at the same time there are many other aspects of our society which would seem to be in more urgent need of a fix.

I am in fact in favour of high speed rail travel, but the UK seems to me to have a poor track record in terms of joined up thinking and joined up communications.
The last significant "improvement" in high speed train travel in my area had the effect of increasing overall journey times, while also making journeys less convenient. This was the construction of the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras, and the termination of the Eurostar service from Waterloo. The effect of this has been to reduce the London to Paris or Brussels journey times by about 20 minutes, while at the same time increasing the total travel time from the south because of the need for cross London travel by tube or taxi.

I have no doubt that significant improvements can be made for rail travel within the UK, and that they should be made, but the current HS2 proposals do not address the issues in a sensible way.

When will politicians realise that a lot of travel is limited by the slowest parts of each journey, rather than the fastest? Simple school level maths questions used to ask about average speeds to make a point. If I have a journey of 30 miles to make, and I travel for half the journey at 20 miles an hour, how fast do I have to travel for the other half to get an average speed of 30 mph? The answer is not 40 mph. In some similar questions I've seen posed the answer would actually be an infinite speed i.e no possible solution, though in this example there is a finite and perhaps feasible solution.

[aeolium]

I quite agree, Dave2002. The project seems far more likely just to suck more people and money in to London than to improve any economic prospects of the north. HS1 had no positive impact on the economy of Kent as employment levels have dropped by 3% since it was built.

Why not forget about London altogether and concentrate on improving the inter-city connections of cities in the Midlands and the North (and up to Scotland eventually), as well as other small-scale improvements elsewhere in the country? Transport spend is already ridiculously skewed in favour of London - average spend per head £2700 in 2011 compared with £5 per head in the North-east! It's absolutely crazy to have another highly expensive London-centred project - for that's what it is.

Yet with Labour apparently committing to support the project not one of the main three parties is opposing this project. It's hardly any wonder why people are deserting the mainstream parties.

[jean]

The Green Party is opposed.

http://greenparty.org.uk/news/2014/03/17/latest-hs2-proposal-simply-makes-bad-project-%E2%80%98slightly-less-bad%E2%80%99/